State pledges to unlock business process outsourcing barriers

ICT Principal Secretary John Tanui. [Standard, file]

The government has reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining the country's competitiveness in the ICT-based export-led labour services sector.

ICT Principal Secretary John Tanui made the assurance during a visit to Sama Global's Nairobi operating hub on Tuesday.

Tanui said that the government is actively addressing the operational barriers faced by players in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector.

"As part of our strategy to attract technology firms' investments, we are working to establish over 1,450 digital hubs nationwide, connecting them through a robust fibre optic backbone infrastructure," Tanui said.

He said that such connectivity has the potential to boost ongoing capacity-building efforts to facilitate more than 1 million jobs in the ICT sector.

The government's assurance was welcomed by Sama Global CEO Wendy Gonzalez and the company's Vice President of Global Delivery, Annepeace Alwala.

The two appreciated the government's commitment to addressing operating challenges as Sama seeks to grow and continue its long track record of growth in Kenya.

Gonzalez noted that recent legal events had created a chilling effect on the growth of the BPO sector. "Kenya could stand to lose more than 2,500 jobs earmarked for Kenyan youth as part of the firm's growth plans this year, but more importantly, the growth of the BPO sector as a whole," she said.

Sama is a social enterprise that provides data annotation solutions for computer vision that power AI and machine learning models.